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Before the Fall of the Empire of Astandalas, the Red Company was legendary. A dozen or so years after that cataclysm, they have almost faded into myth. Pali Avramapul may not have gone under her own name since the dissolution of the Red Company, but she is no myth, and has certainly not faded. She fights folly and injustice as fiercely as ever--although, as a respected scholar of history at one of the Circle Schools of Alinor, she now tends to use her tongue and pen more than her sword. She still keeps the sword sharp, of course. You never know when adventure will come calling. She expects her sabbatical to be a decorous, respectable sort of adventure, the kind with which she can regale her colleagues in the Senior Common Room upon her return. She's not very upset when she finds one or two of her old friends and it turns out the adventure is much more likely to involve a plot to kidnap the Last Emperor of Astandalas. There's respectable, after all, and then there's respectable. Book Two of the Red Company Reformed, but able to be read on its own.… (more)
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If you've read The Hands of the Emperor, you will recognize part of where the story is going. Because time runs differently in different parts of the emperor, Pali's story is a bit compressed, overlapping with the timeline of both The Hands of the Emperor and The Return of Fitzroy Angursell. It very much does not stand on its own, but gives you a new perspective on elements of both those stories. The beginning is very slow and I had a tough time orienting myself to the timeline I just described; the second half moves along at a good clip. Goddard's strength is writing characters and their relationships well, and this is true in Pali as well. I teared up a few times during conversations or reunions.
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Fic SF Goddard |